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Thursday, January 24, 2013

where the wild things are

Why
does it matter that we preserve wilderness in the United States?

Some
people argue that we need to preserve wilderness for its own sake;
others that wild places heal and replenish the human soul, and are
necessary to our very being. There is a current wave of
“neo-environmentalists” who argue wild places have economic and
social value and should be preserved for those reasons. The point can
also be made that wild plants and animals may hold medical secrets
that could benefit humans, and there are countless other reasons
stretching across time and literature and academia. But none have
held up against our ongoing march toward progress.

Last
week, U.S. District Judge Ralph Beistline from Alaska ruled against afederal Fish and Wildlife proposal to protect a 187,000 square mile
chunk of the Arctic – an area larger than California – from oil
and gas exploration to preserve rapidly shrinking polar bear habitat.
Judge Beistline's ruling was applauded by nearly every public figure
in Alaska: Governor Sean Parnell called the ruling a victory against
“the latest in a long string of examples of the federal government
encroaching on our state's rights.”

I
have never been inside the Arctic Circle, and I have never seen a
wild polar bear. I do not have personal experience of the financial
and physical struggles of families living on Alaska's North Slope.
But I like to think that I have a degree of empathy, and I've worked
closely with Alaskan teenagers who have come from such families. I've
spent many weeks in the wilderness with them and many hours paddling
canoes and talking with them and I think that in the process I've
gotten a glimpse into life in villages of the far north. It doesn't
sound easy. But a line has to be drawn somewhere.

Though
I haven't met with a polar bear in the wild, I have watched one at
the Chicago Zoo – a massive creature with a range of hundreds of
miles in the wild, forced to swim in circles in an artificially blue
pool in 90 degree heat in the middle of Chicago. I've also
encountered a good number of wild Alaskan brown bears, and their
smaller black cousins. I've paddled a canoe next to a swimming brown
bear, watched them snatch salmon from a river and spied on them
through binoculars as they lumber over brown tundra. And I have seen
enough other large animals – sharks, manta rays, whales, wolves,
moose and buffalo in the wild – to know the contradictions that
exist in such creatures: violence and grace side by side, power on
one side of the coin and fragility on the other.

In
response to Judge Beistline's ruling, Gov. Parnell issued a statement
that he is “pleased the State of Alaska was able to fight off this
concerted effort to kill jobs and economic development.” Meanwhile,
environmentalists elsewhere in the U.S. have raised their collective
megaphones to express outrage over the decision, protesting on behalf
of the bears. All well and good, but their voices aren't heard in the
one place where it matters most: Alaska, which, as a state, sued the
federal government for trying to intervene in local affairs. Alaskans
know that a bunch of liberals in Washington D.C. don't know shit
about what goes down in northern Alaska. It's a different country up
there, a different culture. And when students are dropping out of
school to hunt walrus to support their family, it's hard to turn down
development that brings jobs and hope to a region still struggling to
define itself in the modern world.

In
New Zealand, where I am spending six months, there are no large
native mammals. The only native land species of any substance were
the moa – large emu-like birds that were hunted to extinction by
the Maori – and the Haast eagle, which died along with their main
food source, the moa. True there are dolphins and whales in New
Zealand's waters, but it is utterly strange to tramp through thick
forest, beneath towering peaks and glistening glaciers, in deep
valleys that seem as wild and remote as you can get – and not have
the slightest fear of running into something that can kill you.
Edward Abbey said that it ain't wilderness unless there's something
big out there that can kill you, but perhaps he had never been to New
Zealand. It's plenty wild down here on the South Island, but you can
cook dinner right in your tent without fear of a bear attack and walk
barefoot up the trails without worrying about a snakebite.

In
a way, it's freeing: a hiker's paradise, free of danger as long as
you bring the right clothing and don't get lost. It offers a relaxed
sort of wilderness experience, and that's a nice change after
spending months camping in bear country. But imagine a world where
all the wild places were like that? It would get boring pretty fast.
Part of the allure of spending time in the wilderness is not knowing
what you'll see, what you might run into around the next bend.
There's a sense of trepidation and excitement. There's the knowledge
that you're not the biggest, baddest thing out there.

So
why preserve wilderness? Because it's of value to use as a species,
because we need it as much as it needs us, economically and
spiritually and ecologically. Preserve wilderness for its own sake,
in the spirit of altruism. And preserve wilderness because I
personally do not want to live in a world where buffalo are nothing
but a roadside attraction on the outskirts of Yellowstone and polar
bears swim in hopeless circles in Chicago and people can walk in the
wild places without any chance of encountering something that bigger
than they are, something very much alive and breathing.

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About Me

I'm Krista. I write stories about the intersection of people, places and nature. Formally, I'm a contributor at High Country News, a non-profit environmental news magazine once called "a scrappy institution that produces some of the finest journalism in the American West." My work has also been published in Slate, Orion, Alaska magazine, New Zealand Wilderness magazine, the Denver Post, Adventure Journal, and a number of other newspapers and websites. See more at www.kristaleelanglois.com.